Loving Our Enemies: A Divine Task

It was the last day of school before the Christmas holidays when 10-year-old Chris Carrier was walking home from school. He was just two houses away from his home when an older-looking man approached him. The man introduced himself as a friend of his father and said he was hosting a party for his father and asked the little boy if he would help with the decorations. Chris agreed and hopped into the back of the man's motor home.

Chris stayed in the back of the truck and made himself comfortable. They quickly passed through the city of Miami to the outskirts. There the man stopped the van. He gave Chris a map and told him to find a certain road because he had missed a turn. The man excused himself saying he had "to get something."

As Chris studied the map, he felt a stinging searing pain in his back. He turned to see the man with an ice pick in his hand. The man pulled Chris out of his seat and proceeded to stab him several times in his chest. The little boy pleaded that if he stopped and let him go he wouldn't tell anyone. The man stopped and told him he would drop him off somewhere. Lying on the floor the little boy asked why the man was doing to this to him. The man replied that his father "had cost him a lot of money."

About an hour later, they stopped driving and the man led him out into the bushes. He told Chris that his father would pick him up there. The last thing Chris remembers was watching the man walk away. Six days later, a local deer hunter found him. Besides being stabbed, he had been shot in the head but had no memory of it.

This ordeal left him blind in one eye so he could not take part in contact sports. Miraculously he suffered no brain damage and was fearfully aware that his abductor was still at large. He struggled with his appearance, but at the tender of age of 13 he began to change. He realized his injuries could have been much worse—he could have died. He also realized he could not stay angry forever. He decided to turn his back on animosity, revenge and self-pity forever.

Twenty-two years after this horrific event, Chris received a phone call. The police informed him that they were holding a man, David McAllister, who confessed to being his abductor. David McAllister had been an aide for an elderly uncle in Chris's family. He had been fired because of drinking problems. Chris went with a friend to visit the man the following day. Here is his account of the meeting.

"When I first spoke to David, he was rather callous. I suppose he thought I was another police officer. A friend who had accompanied me wisely asked him a few simple questions that led to him admitting that he had abducted me. He then asked, ‘Did you ever wish you could tell that young boy that you were sorry for what you did?' David answered emphatically, ‘I wish I could.' That was when I introduced myself to him. Unable to see, he clasped my hand and told me he was sorry for what he had done to me. In return, I offered him my forgiveness and friendship." (Johann C. Arnold, Lost Art of Forgiving, pp.29-31)